A Modern Take on Modern War.

2010.05.17

Buying One And Operating Another?

Yesterday, I came across this article on War is Boring. I made a Post-It note and stuck it to my laptop so that I would remember what I had planned to do this morning.

It worked, and I have read the article in full. Seems like a strange paradox. The armies of the world are working to operate in smaller, less intense situations. The 'Surges' in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example. Both operations have, by and large, seen armies scaling down, operating more with infantry and patrols and reducing the sizes of the operational platforms.

The opposite appears to be true for navies. (And to a certain extent air forces, the recent gagging of a critic of the Pentagon’s new "gajillion-dollar fighter jet" is a case in point.) Robert Gates' recent announcement that the US navy shouldn't expect backing for the carrier fleets it desires is a clear example of this. However, Gates is also the man responsible for the cancellation of the much-vaunted Future Combat Systems programme. The paradoxes and complexities of these things never cease to amaze.

This debate is a tricky one. There is arguably little need for the US to overload on carriers and gajillion-dollar fighter jets. However, it is also vitally important for the US to maintain its big-scary, 'can-of-whoopass', even though it might tend to make her look rather imperialistic. Concerns such as those of Douglas MacGregor, that by focusing on the small wars which dominate military thinking today, we run the risk of "understanding that future conflicts will involve wars among nations and alliances of nations waged by powerful armed forces for regional power and influence; fights for energy, water, food, mineral resources and the wealth they create," are unfounded and unhelpful in terms of establishing the militaries required to fight the wars of today.

These wars will be largely low-intensity affairs. Navies will serve a similar purpose to that which they have held to this day, however, as Paul van Riper demonstrated in Millennium Challenge 2002, carriers are likely to be more vulnerable than opportunistic, especially since airpower is less and less effective, from a grand strategic standpoint.